OFFSTAGE: Keith Urban in Flip Flops for “Long Hot Summer”

(CMT Offstage keeps a 24/7 watch on everything that’s happening with country music artists behind the scenes and out of the spotlight.)

Is it hot in here? Or is it just me looking at Keith Urban in the sneak peek picture of the making of his “Long Hot Summer” video? It’s just one behind-the-scenes glimpse
of what I’m sure will be a hit video, but I can read a lot into that one picture. The fact that he’s wearing flip flops (and jeans and a chambray pearl-snap shirt) says to me he’s going to have a carefree summer attitude in this one, and maybe, like the song says, he’ll have his feet up on the dashboard, singing along with the radio and waiting for the sun to go down. In his Studio Sessions Blog, Urban says he likes to have at least one good summer song on his record and for his tour. “I wrote ‘Long Hot Summer’
with Richard Marx,” he says. (Yes, that Richard Marx. The ’80s pop star behind “Should’ve Known Better” and “Endless Summer Nights,” among others.) “We hadn’t written a lot in the last year or two. I really loved writing with him.” He says Marx came to Nashville, where they crafted the song out of “a typical sort of like drum machine and little loop groove.” Whatever they did, it seems to have worked just as well as when they came together for “Better Life”
and “Everybody.”